The Way We Were
by Araceli L
Summary: Yay for fluff! Just a happy little story about Nana and Red. May or may not be inspired by events in my real life. Wink.


**_A/n: _Yay for fluff and bad poetry. Please excuse all the spelling mistakes. I can't find spellcheck anywhere, not even on this damned online editor. My Word stopped working. ;_; Oh well, I 'spose. Enjoy this, if you can, because I rather like it. :D**

**The Way We Were**

_It was the summer of '09  
><em>_When I fell in love with you  
><em>_And after then it always seemed  
><em>_like it was just we two._

_I remember when I first saw you,  
><em>_your eyes scrunched tight in the late summer's sun,  
><em>_at a soccer game I couldn't believe I was attending,  
><em>_a soccer game you had so proudly won._

_I cheered you on for no reason at all,  
><em>_I had never seen you around.  
><em>_But the moment you got the ball,  
><em>_Your eyes met mine and we were dumfounded._

_I was flattered, but also a little bit shocked  
><em>_but still our eyes stayed locked.  
><em>_Then, your coach was yelling at you,  
><em>_but there was a smile on your face and you were a red hue._

_I remember approaching you after that game,  
><em>_butterflies tickling and fluttering my tummy,  
><em>_but as soon as I saw your eyes, my worries were tamed  
><em>_because really, you were undeniably funny._

_And at the moment it seems so silly,  
><em>_so lovely, so free, so happy-go-lucky,  
><em>_but deep in my heart I know what is true,  
><em>_and that is my ever-lasting love for you._

_By now this poem's gone on too long,  
><em>_because it's sounding like a Taylor Swift song.  
><em>_I know that was a horrible rhyme, but give me time,  
><em>_and -_

My words, and laughter, stopped there as my lips were claimed in a hungry kiss. We broke apart, giggling fiercely. I wrapped my hand around his, then looked up at him, my chuckles subsiding, to study him. I truly was a little nervous at what he would think of my silly poem.

His sweet face blocked the sun, tall as he was, and giving his ebony hair a halo-like wreath. But I knew Red wasn't embarrased. I could see, in those dark eyes, that he was flattered, pleased, but most of all, loving. And a few shades of scarlet.

I laughed again, putting my free hand to his burning cheek. "Red, don't you dare make fun of my _awesome_ poem."

He grinned, that same grin I fell in love with from that first soccer game I saw him in. "Of course not." He kissed my cheek, then pulled me against his chest.

We were sitting, me between his legs, on a cliche red-checkered blanket during a cliche picnic. But that was one of the many things I loved about him: how cliche and romantic all of this was. It made it all the more beautiful.

I think the best thing about me and Red was our lack of intensity. For example, every so often or so he'd swoop in for a kiss, but our kisses were never lustful. I didn't have much of a desire to go any further with him, and not because I didn't love him. In fact, most of my friends had been urging me that the time was now, that this was the next step in our relationship, and to just do it already, we'd feel better once we had. But I knew we wouldn't.

What would it do? They said it would bring us closer together, but we were already so close I didn't think it would change anything. Red was my best friend. I was satsified with the way everything was, with the way we were - why would doing it do anything different? I loved the way we were, and I didn't want anything to ever change that.

Abruptly, he got up, and, taking my hand, pulled me to my feet. He had a strangely serious expression on his face, and nervous wobbles began to shake my stomach.

"Red?"

He looked at me. A bit of a smile was forming on the corner of his lips. "Nana."

I had the sudden, swinging thought that he was going to kneel down and ask me to marry him.

But he didn't. Instead, he looked off to the side, and shouted, "Wild Eevee!" Then he took of sprinting, fishing a Pokeball out of his pocket as he went.

I stood off the side, my arms crossed and a "you're such an idiot" smirk on my face as I watched him battle the Pokemon with his own trusty Charizard. But I was actually pretty proud of him. I couldn't help it.

Back at his own school in Kanto, where I'd met him, Pokemon Training was their main priority, and he was at the top of the school. They'd bragged about him quite a lot, really, when I was enrolling there; they'd went on and on about their top student, and I rather got the idea he was a huge prick. A real twit if you'd asked me.

This kid had supposedly won every Pokemon Tourney they'd thrown him into, been on several missions, captured Dark and Wild Pokemon, and, the principal and said with pride, was the best forward on the soccer team. Inwardly, I'd been laughing and laughing at him, but I kept a straight face, and managed to say I'd be pleased to meet him, of course meaning _I so hope I never meet him._

Until I attended a certain soccer game, that is. But you can fill in the rest.

Now, he trotted back to me, adjusting his cap on his forehead. I broke into a grin and fell into his arms, deftly plucking his hat from his head and putting it on my own. Sure, I was about a foot shorter than him, but I was defintely growing.

He laughed and flopped back down, then seemed to remember the Eevee had interrupted something, and jumped back up. He faced me, then took my hands in his own.

His hands had been so smooth then. So young and defiant and strong.

"Nana," he whispered, as if there had been no interruption, "do you love me?"

It was an odd question for him to ask, so I squinted my eyes at him. "Of course I love you. Why do you ask?" Those butterflies were back, but they weren't of nervousness - they were of excitment. I wasn't worried he was going to ask me something I couldn't do - he knew me better than that.

"Because..." With that, he dropped to the ground, kneeling. I gasped, shocked - we were so young! How -

"I just like being told."

He sprung back up as I playfully whacked him with his hat, which he stole and replaced on his head.

"In all seriousness, though," he started again, but it was hard to believe, because his eyes were still crinkled in a smile, "I do want to ask you something."

My heart started pounding. I could read the intensity in his eyes, something I didn't usually see. It wasn't a bad thing, just unusual, and scary for that reason.

He wound a gloved hand into my brown hair, playing with the locks, then resting it against my ear. His other hand held my hand, the palm, the fingers I'd grown so used to interlocked with my own.

"You say you love me...what do you mean? You said it was silly, but you said it was ever-lasting."

I gulped. I'd known this conversation would pop up at some point, because he thought about things like that. I wasn't nervous of the truth; I was just nervous of answering.

Without looking at him, I freed my hands and wrapped them around his neck. I could feel his eyes on mine, and when I looked back at him, I was stunned by their beauty all over again.

But I'm not going to go into cliche descriptions of them sparkling like onyx and granite and whatever black things you can think of. I just know I was lost in them like always.

"I mean both, Red." His expression didn't change, so I didn't breathe a sigh of relief just yet. "I suppose this is what people call young love - puppy love - and they say it doesn't last. And I don't know if it will. I can't see the future, and neither can you."

His eyes, so beautiful, locked so intensely in mine.

"But I don't care about the future. There isn't one and there never will be - it's just the word we use to describe what comes ahead, what we don't know. There's now - and Red, I love you now."

At last, a smile was building on his lips and in his face.

"And there's only going to be now, from today onward. It'll be now forever."

With that, that amazing, life-altering grin broke out on his features, a smile meant for me and me only; I knew it would always be _my _Red's grin. But he didn't rush forward and kiss me, like the movies say. He didn't take me in his arms and kiss me till I couldn't breathe, till I was weak in the knees.

He wrapped me into a hug.

Kisses are great - beautiful, life-altering, even - but sometimes even they don't compare to the warmth and love in a hug.

And when we finally pulled back, after what seemed like hours, he planted a very fragile kiss on the tip of my nose.

"And besides," I smiled, "You never forget your first love."

"Yea," he agreed dreamily. "I'll never forget her."

I wasn't hurt, but it stung to some degree. As my mouth fell open, he chuckled.

"You. I'm not sure you know just how much I love you, Nana."

The atmosphere went from serious to playful and happy-go-lucky so easily, so quickly, and I was so grateful our relationship was like that. Easy. Perfect.

He was standing apart from me now, grinning. I stretched my arms as far as they would go, and said, "This much?"

He rushed toward me and picked me up, spun me around. Kissing me, he laughed, "Of course!"

Soon as he put me down, I grabbed his hand, and began to run. He fell into step easily beside me, and we ran. I can't tell you where we were going. Forward, I suppose. All I know is we romped happily on those lush green hills we had our picnic on, occasionally dancing, jumping, laughing, running.

We were alive. We were free.

I've never felt so vivacious in my entire laugh as that afternoon with Red, when I told him the one thing that I knew would define me; that captured my heart since I'd seen him.

I think the clearest memory I had that day was of the sunset, and not us sitting together watching it, kissing as it went down, but us dancing together on the tallest hill as it sihlouetted us.

We weren't pressed up close to each other; we didn't need that. He was holding me the way a prince might at an old ball, and I had curtsyed, holding the hem of my summer dress. I still remember that dress, pink with white flowers.

We were dancing, swaying, twirling, doing whatever we knew off of movies; and we both fell into a fit of laughter from of our terrible attemps. But after a while it wore off, and when I said quietly that there was no music, the best moment of my life happened.

I remember Red leaning close to me, his lips tickling my ear, his breath warm, my breath. It was then that I realized just how much I needed him. His breath was my breath.

And he murmured, "My heart stops without you, there's something about you, that makes me feel alive."

I was awestuck; they were the words to a duet we heard often on the radio when we went out for a drive. They had sounded cheesy then, but sung, whispered to me by the man I loved, they were all the words I'd ever need.

And we danced there, Red was singing quietly to me, and me only, for the rest of my life.

But that was long ago, and times have taxed me, my memory, and my age.

Now, as I lay here dying, I smile up easily toward the heaven I'll soon encounter. Because I know I'll meet Red again. I'm not upset about dying - I'm happy to follow my lover.

Because as soon as I get there, I know he'll be singing those words to me again.

"And I knew, that I'd always love you..."

"Oh, I'll always love you too."

**A/n: Yay fluff! Originally it was gonna have a huge twist ending, but it wouldn't cut it, so I did away with it. Hope you enjoyed, please review, and thank you for reading. (Again, sorry for the mistakes!)**

**~Araceli L**


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